Like many Renaissance artists before him, Milton attempted to integrate Christian theology with classical modes. In his early poems, the poet narrator expresses a tension between vice and virtue, the latter invariably related to Protestantism.
In Comus Milton may make ironic use of the Caroline court masque by elevating notions of purity and virtue over the conventions of court revelry and superstition. In his later poems, Milton's theological concerns become more explicit. In he wrote a hymn How lovely are thy dwelling fair, a paraphrase of Psalm 84, that explains his view on God.
Milton embraced many heterodox Christian theological views. He rejected the Trinity, in the belief that the Son was subordinate to the Father, a position known as Arianism; and his sympathy or curiosity was probably engaged by Socinianism: in August he licensed for publication by William Dugard the Racovian Catechism, based on a non-trinitarian creed.
A source has interpreted him as broadly Protestant, if not always easy to locate in a more precise religious category. In his treatise, Of Reformation, Milton expressed his dislike for Catholicism and episcopacy, presenting Rome as a modern Babylon, and bishops as Egyptian taskmasters.
These analogies conform to Milton's puritanical preference for Old Testament imagery. Through the Interregnum, Milton often presents England, rescued from the trappings of a worldly monarchy, as an elect nation akin to the Old Testament Israel, and shows its leader, Oliver Cromwell, as a latter-day Moses. These views were bound up in Protestant views of the Millennium, which some sects, such as the Fifth Monarchists predicted would arrive in England.
Milton, however, would later criticise the "worldly" millenarian views of these and others, and expressed orthodox ideas on the prophecy of the Four Empires. Other essays on Milton and religion Milton and the Bible. Title page to Milton's Reason of Church-Government Women surrounded Nayler, laying palm leaves in front of him.
This incident was debated in parliament for six weeks, many MPs arguing that Nayler should be put to death for blasphemy. In the end, a more lenient punishment was decided upon, and Nayler had his tongue drilled through. This has taken politicians, journalists and academics by surprise, and many are struggling to catch up. In the academic world this has led to a new interest in writers like Milton.
This distinction was less sharp years ago. Milton cannot be understood out of his religious context. When he was a young man, Milton was preparing to become a clergyman in the Church of England, as his parents had intended.
Why was this? Well, to explain this, we need to go back to the sixteenth century, the century before Milton. In the later Middle Ages, many people in Europe were concerned about problems in the church including corruption, low educational standards for priests, and religious apathy among the general population. In the early sixteenth century, some people, such as Martin Luther in Germany and John Calvin in France and Switzerland, started to argue that the root problem in the church was that its message had drifted from the original message of Jesus Christ and his first followers.
After Cambridge, Milton spent six years living with his family in Buckinghamshire and studying independently. In , John Milton went to Europe, where he probably met the astronomer Galileo , who was under house arrest at the time. He returned to England earlier than he had planned because of the impending civil war there.
Milton was a Puritan who believed in the authority of the Bible, and opposed religious institutions like the Church of England, and the monarchy, with which it was entwined. He wrote pamphlets on radical topics like freedom of the press, supported Oliver Cromwell in the English Civil War, and was probably present at the beheading of Charles I.
It was during these years that Milton married for the first time. In , when he was 34, he married year-old Mary Powell. The two separated for several years, during which time Milton wrote The Divorce Tracts , a series of publications advocating for the availability of divorce.
The couple reunited and had four children before Mary died in It was also in that Milton became totally blind. In , he married Katherine Woodcock. Milton left the university in July with bachelor's and master's degrees. He settled down, with his aging parents, at the family estate in Horton. He now gave himself to attempt "things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme. Though he thought of them as preliminary exercises, they still rank high in English poetry.
In , as he approached his thirtieth year, solitude and obscurity began to irk Milton, so he set out on a continental tour—Paris, Florence where "I found and visited the famous Galileo, grown old, a prisoner of the Inquisition" , Rome, and Naples. When he heard that civil war was brewing in England, he abandoned further travel: "I thought it disgraceful, while my fellow citizens fought for liberty at home, to be travelling for pleasure abroad.
The poet settled in London, resumed his studies, and began to swim in "the troubled sea of noises and hoarse dispute" as a writer of pamphlets. His first pamphlet, published in , was the opening volley of 20 years of political warfare. He attacked the corruptions of state and church while upholding the ideals of the Puritan party. In the spring of , the year-old Milton married Mary Powell, the year-old daughter of royalists.
It was an unhappy marriage. Mary came from a large family and found Milton's quiet, bookish existence lonely.
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